


Of Pink Elephants And Young Idiots.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Extremely Belated 2011 Bujold Fest, Teenagers drinking, Time Period: Reign of Gregor Vorbarra, Yay WIP finishing!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 12:06:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles's first day at school is awful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Pink Elephants And Young Idiots.

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [Tel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tel/pseuds/Tel) in the [2011_bujold_fest](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/2011_bujold_fest) collection. 



> Written for [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/tel/profile)[**tel**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/tel/) 's [prompt](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/2011_bujold_fest/prompts/24796) in the [2011 Bujold Fest](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/2011_bujold_fest): _Ezar Vorbarra makes a surprising recovery and raises Gregor to adulthood_ , but was (obviously) not finished in time.

Miles's first day at school is awful. Truly awful, he informs Gregor later, his feet theatrically up on the Imperial desk, and Gregor has to push Miles's boots to the floor so that he has somewhere to sit and loom over Miles while suspiciously examining Miles's black eye.

"Who gave you this?" he asks, poking at the bandage over Miles's nose.

"Ivan," Miles says half-way between mournfully and triumphantly. "I'd say you should see the other guy, but Ivan still isn't speaking to you, right?"

"He still thinks he isn't," Gregor agrees. He rummages through one of his desk drawers without looking and eventually gropes out a bottle of illicit Komarran whiskey. "Here, have a toast to your honorable injuries."

"Bless you," Miles says and vacates Gregor's chair to go find a glass. Gregor takes the strategic opportunity to reclaim his domain from overreaching Vorkosigans. 

While he's at it, he pulls out the stack of correspondence he still has to go through. Mama always sorts it weekly and put it into piles depending on who has to respond to it. This one is _official - Gregor_ which, despite his best efforts, is always a much bigger pile than he'd like it to be, and also always towers over _personal - Gregor_ , which is either pathetic or tragic depending on how tiny that pile is this time. The official correspondence isn't too bad this week; he could probably finish it off in less than two hours. Maybe three, if Miles decides to stick around and distract him.

Miles returns with two tumblers and pours generous portions. He rattles off a formal and completely inappropriate toast from memory while blatantly reading Count Vordrozda's letter over Gregor's shoulder.

"Does your mother know you have this?" Miles asks after he's swallowed. "Because I think she would have words. This is poisonous."

"It's for when I have to go through Ministerial reports," Gregor says. He's barely wetted his lips with his shot. "It keeps things interesting. You drink whenever you want to drag the Minister down into the square and start stringing him up. By the time you get to the end, you're unconscious and you also haven't destroyed your government."

"Mm. Whoever wrote this can't spell," Miles offers helpfully. He skims down the page, covering parts of the calligraphy with his fingers as he trails through Count Vordrozda's very sincere message of condolence and support. "And it wasn't him, because I think he knows what side of his District his capital is in."

"You'd be surprised," Gregor says, and pulls out his stationary to start composing his response. "There's a lot of pettiness and stupidity and mixing up basic geography to try to score a point about how annoying each Count finds his neighbors. They think I won't notice, being young and impressionable. And _last_ week, Count Vorpinski spent two paragraphs berating me for not being married yet. Mama made me rewrite the one where I reminded him I would need the Regent's consent to marry and, anyway, his granddaughter's much too young. I'm not supposed to encourage Council infighting. Too bad, sometimes it's fun. Since he's always on the wrong side of your grandfather, I suppose I could spread it around that I'm marrying Olivia, just to give Vorpinski a heart attack."

Miles shudders. "Don't give him more things to fight about with my father. Please. It's bad enough every time my parents visit Beta Colony. Politics are even worse. He and Gran'da start going at it, and then Olivia pipes up that they're all wrong, with Elizabeth providing harmony, and then I'm forced to invade the Vorpatrils if I want to get any sleep. And Ivan just assaulted me in front of witnesses, so I'd rather not."

"He did not assault you," Gregor retorts, and signs with a flourish. He's responded to enough of these letters in the years since Grandfather's health began to decline. He could write them in his sleep by now. He thinks he probably has. Sometimes when Mama's given him back some of them to rewrite, Gregor's looked them over and couldn't actually remember writing them in the first place. It all blurs. All of the letters over the years merge together and then get mixed in with all the times he was grabbed out of the academy and taken to ImpMil to be sat on by nervous security and terrified politicians while Grandfather underwent a treatment or a surgery or _something_. And then the final time, when he hadn't been permitted to go back to school, and everyone had suddenly started talking a lot more carefully where he could hear.

It had all been excruciatingly inevitable after that.

"How do you know?" Miles asks sensibly. "I don't think Illyan would bang down your door if he did."

"And he also wouldn't if Ivan knocked you out on the practice mats, which is much more likely," Gregor says. "I don't need a security briefing to know that you don't stand a chance against Ivan in close quarters. Have you ever beaten him?"

"Once. I'm offended that you don't remember. I'd sulk, but, well," Miles raises the glass. "You have already given me a worthy bribe to stop."

"The problem is you don't care if you can knock him out because he's never going to be a threat to your overall class ranking," Gregor says, rummaging through for the next most urgent letter. "And so he keeps beating you and then the two of you get into some kind of snit, and then I'm up to my ears in Vorpatril kids asking me if I can do anything about you and Ivan. And I have to say sorry, there's no cure for stupidity, otherwise I would have used it by now. And Mama will sigh over me again and tell me that I have to get better at refereeing family squabbles. And since neither of you listens to me, I'm not exactly sure what I can do to fix your problem with Lord Ivan, Lord Miles. Other than tell you that, _yes_ , I am very sure that he didn't assault you."

Miles is staring at him when Gregor lifts his head from Count Vorlynkin's barely-disguised screed against Count Vorkalloner. Speaking of young idiots, he can nearly hear Grandfather saying. But, according to Grandfather, everyone, including the Lord Regent, is a young idiot. The important word there, Gregor's always figured, is _young_. When you're ancient, it must be so easy to call everyone stupid because they're young. By the time they can argue that they're old enough for you to stop condescending to them based on their age, you're dead.

"I didn't mean assault literally," Miles says after he's very sure Gregor is paying attention to him. "This isn't a complaint to my sovereign." He follows that with a few choice profanities in Russian, rubbing at his forehead. "Seriously, Gregor, you need to relax."

Gregor rolls his eyes at him. "I'll make a note of that, thank you. I'm sure I can find some time."

"Maybe after the Birthday?" Miles suggests, and then frowns at Gregor's instinctive wince. "What?"

"My birthday," Gregor starts, then gives up and waves it away. "Never mind."

"It's going to be a holiday for the rest of your life," Miles says. "But it's still yours. It's not like it's getting taken away and you don't have a birthday anymore. You just need to invite a lot more people to the party. And you like parties. What's the problem?"

It's different when you're the host, Gregor doesn't say. There's nothing Miles likes more than an audience. He wouldn't understand.

"Never mind," Gregor says. "It's fine. I'll manage." He finishes the paragraph he's been writing automatically and then hands the letter to Miles. "Here, read this. Tell me if it's taking any side in their argument." 

What Gregor would really like to do would be to tell both Vorlynkin and Vorkalloner to knock it off, but he knows he can't. They aren't Miles and Ivan; Gregor can't knock their heads together or tell their mothers on them. He has to stand to the side and be a neutral mediator and be Emperor, and not overreach by interfering in a squabble between Counts that isn't actually a danger to the planet.

Because Grandfather could have treated Counts like stupid squabbling kids and done whatever he liked, but Gregor knows he's still years away from having the kind of iron grip on real power that Grandfather'd had. How had Grandfather managed it? Nineteen years of lessons and Gregor has no idea how he's going to survive the day after his birthday when he'll have to stand in front of the Joint Councils without Grandfather's or Lord Regent Vortala's steadying presence standing behind him. It's probably going to be very horrible.

He'll still have Mama and Count Vortala and Lord and Lady Vorkosigan and Uncle Padma and Aunt Alys and Count Vorkosigan and Count Vorinnis and Miles and Ivan and their million siblings, but it'll be real, then. Real in a way that it hasn't been yet. The formal oath-takings had been muted, he thinks, by shock. They'd spent so much time preparing for it; it had been strange when it actually happened. It had all seemed so very far away.

"You're not," Miles says, and hands the letter back to him. "Although if you want to, Olivia's friends with Irina Vorkalloner, so I think that means I'm on Count Vorkalloner's side in this."

Gregor sighs.

"And Justin Vorlynkin is a year behind me and he broke one of my top scores on a written, so that's another mark against his family. And-- Gregor, you realize I'm kidding, right?"

No. "Yes," Gregor says, and downs the shot. "Sorry, Miles. It's just that you sound like half of the Counts, trying to get me around on their side about some thing or another. And they don't always pretend it's really something that matters. Sometimes it's exactly something like 'his daughter dumped my son'. At least you're honest."

Miles considers this, then pats Gregor on the shoulder companionably. "Honesty will get you far in life," he intones, sounding, for a moment, very much like the Count, although Gregor can't imagine the Count saying something like that. At Grandfather's funeral, Count Vorkosigan had looked over Gregor like he was a disappointing horse and turned to Mama and told him to raise him well. What the Count thought Mama could do in the handful of months between Grandfather's death and Gregor's majority, Gregor doesn't want to know.

"What do you think'll happen?" Gregor asks. "After my-- the Birthday?"

Miles frowns. "Well, our mothers will be on Beta for a couple months and then on Escobar for that war memorial dedication ceremony, and-- that's not what you mean, is it. Um. Well, no one's going to storm the Residence. Illyan's really good at his job, as good as old Negri. You know that. And everyone'll be home in time for Winterfair, and I think Olivia still plans on giving you something really embarrassing, so that'll be good for a laugh. And. Um. Really, Gregor. It'll be fine. Don't worry about it."

"It's hard to think about anything else," Gregor admits. He twists his fingers together self-consciously, then stills himself. He has to stop doing that. 

Miles has been looking dubiously down at Gregor, and then he shrugs. "Think about elephants," he advises. "Big, pink elephants. Elephants that in no way look like the Counts and Ministers. Even if they might actually resemble elephants, particularly Count Vorfolse. Or you could just replace the fear with something more terrifying, like the potential in-laws who've been flattering up your mother. Who knows, you could end up making Count Vorpinski happy after all."

"Even his nieces are all already married, and we're too closely related anyway," Gregor says on reflex, and Miles grins.

"See, I've distracted you already," Miles says. "How about we pull out the social register and then we can insult your relatives and decide who you will not, under any circumstances, marry? And by the time we're done, your armsmen will be just about ready to throw me out of here so you can get back to whatever you're supposed to be doing right now instead of entertaining me."

"My armsmen don't need encouragement," Gregor says. "I can get them in here and have you picked up and thrown out at any time."

"Yes, but you won't," Miles says. "What would you do without me? Your life would be so boring."

"I shudder to think," Gregor says. "I might actually get some work done. It would be tragic."

"Completely horrible," Miles agrees cheerfully. "You have fifty years to turn into Ezar. You don't need to do it before your twentieth birthday."

"It would be better if I could," Gregor says. "Certainly faster. Why delay the inevitable?"

"That's it," Miles decides. "We need to get you _really_ drunk. Don't move, I think we need Ivan for this." He hops down. "Don't worry," he says, patting Gregor on the shoulder while he heads to Gregor's comconsole. Gregor looks on in stunned bemusement. "This won't hurt a bit."

"Until tomorrow morning," Gregor says dryly.

"Eh, deal with tomorrow, tomorrow," Miles shrugs, and calls the Vorpatrils.


End file.
